light

Like A Tent Of Light (Free ebook!)

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In the past few months I’ve been experimenting with some new pieces that blur the lines a bit between prose and poetry. I’m calling them Meditations, and I want to offer them now as a companion for you this Lent.

This free ebook contains eight meditations centering around the accounts of Emmaus and the Transfiguration, two of my favorite pieces of Scripture. These two passages have similar, other-wordly qualities, and yet they different in several critical ways.

On one hand, we recognize that God is beyond us – that at his revelation, we will be flat-faced in awe, stunned into recognizing how meaningless our attempts at communication are in the face of glory. In the Transfiguration, we see Christ as we will one day see Him again in glory, in the coming of the Kingdom for which we long.

And yet, the Church has always maintained an emphasis that this very same God can be known and communicated with through the most ordinary, bodily details of life. It has insisted on sacrament. For those who have eyes to see, the very bread which we hold in our hands can be a moment of unveiling, a communication with Christ who has become the Bread of Life.

What these accounts both have in common is their telling of an unveiling. They reveal that there is a Reality that exists below the eye-level attention we generally give to the world. They point towards a coming day when we, too, will be transfigured – when we will become truly Real.

Whether these meditations walk you through the weeks of Lent, or any other season of your journey, my hope is that they can be a launching-off point, a beginning for your own thoughts and experience.

You can access the book and learn more here. Due to some Amazon regulations, it will only be available for free download for five days before they set it to .99 (for those without Kindle Unlimited) – but you can also access the pdf version here at any time. It would be a great delight to hear what you think when you are done! You can leave comments on Amazon or right here at the end of this post.

Happy reading!

Candlemas

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Candlemas is a church feast with a long history whose roots at a later point tangle with both Groundhog Day and the feast of St. Brigid. Officially it is called the Feast of the Presentation, commemorating Christ’s presentation in the temple with both Anna and Simeon as witness.

The guiding image of Candlemas, as Simeon so beautifully sings, is Light – Christ’s “light to lighten the nations.” My recent book contains two poems centered around Candlemas, and I though in honor of the feast today I would share the second one with you.

Candlemas II

Flame-thrown light tells you

      what to do with this,

a labyrinth of interiority.

It will guide you out of 

      the sharp edged shadows

the rotten boards hidden 

      under the rug of strangeness

the creeping vine of doubts.

You throw salt over the side 

     of a crumbling wall

and you allow your eyes to become two 

    clear bells in the dark.

And candlelight reaches up 

    towards the night

as instinct tells you to raise your eyes 

    as the evening dusks

as a wisp of sparrows curl like smoke 

above the trees.

Unveiling

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Peel back the layers of darkness

That cover our minds.

Sweep the smoky shadows from our eyes.

Reveal yourself to us once again.

 

We have grown old and blind

In our waiting

We have strained our eyes for

The sweep of the dramatic curtain

The sky broken open in glory.

 

A mourning dove sings.

A sudden tinge of dawn

On the slender horizon.

 

Listen, and you will hear the song

Of all things calling forth from memory

Back from true desire.

 

Listen—

Let us dance along the crevice

Of the trembling dawn

Let us hasten on to meet you

With arms piled full of light.

 

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